And when in Spain... so we had to go see the bull fighting ring. Which I definitely don't agree with as a sport since they always kill the bull (and if the bull kills the matador apparently they also kill the bulls mother so she cannot produce such violent offspring again- somehow this seems a little wrong to me). They give the meat away to the poor though so I'm told this justifies the whole thing because that's the only meat the poor ever get. Yep, still not persuaded.
Here's a view of the ring. Luckily, bull fights are only in the summer so darn, we couldn't see one.
Here is the head of an actual bull that was killed by a matador.
And after all that violence we went to visit the Seville Cathedral. Really that's its name. It was pretty impressive though and much better lit than Notre Dame.
It's amazing how much detail and effort they put into these buildings. Taylor's dad explained to me that hauling the stone was too burdensome so these cathedrals were usually built right on top of the quaries. By amazing feats of engineering, they'd dig out the stones and keep not only the land standing but also the new building above it. He's actually been down into some of the caverns under cathedrals in France.
What has amazed me both times I've been in Europe is that amazing number of these ornate cathedrals and then the lack of people inside them. They really aren't used much anymore and it's such a shame.
Seville, Spain is apparently where Christopher Columbus came to ask money for his trip to America. He sailed out of a port just to the south of it and because of this he is buried/entombed here in their cathedral. Yep, you're actually looking at the casket of Christopher Columbus. 
Here's a view of Seville from the top of the Cathedral. Very cloudy.
We're currently working on Ethan's smile. He really does have a great spontaneous smile but whenever he says "cheese", this is what you get. 
The architecture is always just as amazing to me as the sculptures and stained glass.
All the streets of Seville were lined with these gorgeous orange trees. We weren't sure if they were public or private but there weren't any littered or rotting on the ground. It sounds very appealing to me to just walk out of your apartment in the morning and grab and orange on your way to work.
Although there weren't very many tiled buildings in Spain, they thiled this bench.
A few weeks before we left for Christmas one of the speakers in our sacrament told this story. Here's the link if you want to read the whole thing. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html I guess the Washington Post was trying to do an experiment so they got Joshua Bell (a world class violinist) to sit at a metro stop during DC rush hour traffic and they counted how many people stopped, etc. The numbers were staggeringly small even though you'd have had to pay hundreds of dollars to go to one of his concerts and he was playing some of the most difficult violin music that exists and on a really rare,old violin. Most that didn't stop said that they either didn't even notice him playing in their rush to get to work or didn't have time to stop. As we were walking around Seville, we walked past this guy in the picture below. Of course we rushed through in our desire to get to the next thing. As we did so I noticed that the walls were lined with lots of people stopping and listening. This was a Monday morning mind you so I assume these people had places to be. It was very thought provoking to me how different cultures are and how much we miss by always being in such a hurry. Buildings are beautiful and this historic city has lots of them but I think we might have missed out on an amazing experience by not paying attention to the opportunities around us.
This is the palace in Seville (it was tragically closed on Monday) but it's supposed to be amazing inside- next time I guess.
All throughout the city they had these amazing nativities (being Christmas-time and all). It was so neat to see Ethan's interest in them and he always wanted to find the baby Jesus and all the other characters. Thank you Joyschool for getting him so interested.
Me and Isaac in front of some amazing buildings. 
1 comment:
Beautiful Pictures! It looks like you had a great time.
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